by Claudio Sanchez, NPR Morning Edition | | This story was produced for broadcast by Marisa Penaloza.| http://n.pr/s4NP2F
Listen to the Story [7 min 56 sec]
Marisa Penaloza/NPR - What's known as Middle School No. 8 in Leander, Texas, was supposed to help relieve overcrowding in the rapidly growing community. But after significant statewide cuts to education, the district can't afford to open the school.
Broadcast December 22, 2011 ::
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
In state after state this year, funding for education has been cut back significantly. At least 37 states slashed budgets for elementary and secondary schools.
WERTHEIMER: Some of the deepest cuts - $4 billion worth - came in Texas. The impact was immediate. More than 12,000 teachers and support staff were laid off. Academic and transportation and programs were cut to the bone. Promising reforms were eliminated or put on hold.
MONTAGNE: And as NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports, next year, the cuts could go even deeper.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: Schools in Pasadena, Texas, just outside Houston, have seen tight budgets before, but never like this: $21 million in cuts this fall alone, says Candace Ahlfinger, an associate superintendent of schools - 340 positions eliminated.
CANDACE AHLFINGER: Of those 340, about 180 were teaching positions, 160 were support staff.
SANCHEZ: Special education teachers who worked with dyslexic kids: gone. Teachers' aides: gone. Dozens of bus drivers, crossing guards and security personnel: gone.
With the district's $350 million budget shrinking and more cuts on the horizon...
AHLFINGER: Everything has been on the chopping block. There's not been a sacred cow. There's nothing that we have said no, we cannot touch that.
SANCHEZ: The state granted Pasadena schools a waiver so that it could legally raise class size beyond the maximum of 22 mandated in grades K through four. About 7,000 schools have been granted such waivers statewide, a three-fold increase from last year.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Good morning. Wake up to a brand new day.
SANCHEZ: Still, every morning teachers at Mae Smythe Elementary in Pasadena grit their teeth and pretend everything is fine.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Good morning. What about me? Am I chopped liver this morning? Happy Friday.
SANCHEZ: School officials here considered asking parents to pay for some services, but the vast majority of families in this district - 80 percent - live at or below the federal poverty guidelines.
In many school districts across Texas, though, parents are footing the bill for bus transportation, field trips, athletics, uniforms.
JACKIE LAIN: Something's got to give, right?
SANCHEZ: Jackie Lain is with the Texas School Boards Association.
LAIN: They're charging for any of the extras that they don't absolutely have to provide so that they can keep teachers employed in the classrooms.
SANCHEZ: Lain says the 6 percent cut in school funding this year was bad enough. Next year, it'll be 8 to 9 percent.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAFFIC)
SANCHEZ: Even wealthy school districts are feeling the pinch.
I'm standing in front of Middle School No. 8 in Leander, Texas. It's an enormous building. This school was supposed to open this year. There's a lot of construction going on, but the construction that's going on was slowed because the district cannot afford to open this school.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAFFIC)
SANCHEZ: Leander is a bedroom community just outside Austin that's growing like crazy. But it doesn't have enough money to open two brand new schools that it built to relieve overcrowding. With less money from the state, Leander had to cut $20 million from its budget and lay off 213 employees - 50 of them classroom teachers.
BRET CHAMPION: For the first time since World War II, the state hasn't funded what it had promised to fund.
SANCHEZ: Leander School Superintendent Bret Champion says Texas raised school funding consistently every year for the past half century, until now.
CHAMPION: It's absolutely unconscionable that we would stop educating kids well because we have limited resources.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING CROWD)
SANCHEZ: At tonight's football game between Leander High and Vista Ridge High School, the funding crisis is the last thing on parents' minds. The stadium fills quickly. It's supposed to be a good game.
I stop a few parents in the parking lot and remind them that Leander has already eliminated a couple of sports: golf and tennis. What if football was next?
ROSS BRITON: I'd spend a thousand bucks out of pocket myself to make sure it stayed. I'd work two jobs if it took that to do it. End of story.
SANCHEZ: Ross Briton's son plays football. He says it's not just a sport here. It's part of the culture, a big part in the community's identity. The district should pare down the curriculum before it cuts football, says Briton.
BRITON: I would cut most liberal arts out of the high school. I'd keep math, science, reading. I'd add the vocational education back, because I think there's too much fluff.
SANCHEZ: Several parents who've gathered nod in agreement. As they walk away, a few stay behind to say they disagree. Cutting instructional programs, they say, is more damaging than cutting sports.
Kate Patterson works for a local non-profit that ran a program for struggling readers in the Austin area, including Leander. Sadly, it's been cut, she says, and lawmakers don't seem to care.
KATE PATTERSON: And honestly, I'm not looking to the government anymore.
SANCHEZ: Patterson says it's as if Texas has thrown in the towel when it comes to education, but some lawmakers blame voters.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE SCOTT HOCHBERG: Legislators respond to what they hear.
SANCHEZ: Scott Hochberg, a Democrat and state representative from Houston, says that parents and community organizations that are now aghast at the cuts' impact haven't put nearly enough pressure on legislators.
HOCHBERG: I think they need to put their votes where their mouths are.
SANCHEZ: Texas, meanwhile, is sitting on at least $5 billion in its rainy day fund - mostly gas and oil revenues, money that lawmakers refuse to draw from to blunt the cuts in education, says Hochberg. Why?
HOCHBERG: Because the governor told them to. The governor drew a very, very sharp line in the sand that the rainy day fund, which was specifically designed for periods of economic slowdown, would not be touched.
SANCHEZ: NPR repeatedly called on Governor Rick Perry and numerous Republican legislators asking them to comment for this story. They refused. Michael Sullivan did not. He's president Empower Texans, an anti-tax lobbying group. For too long, says Sullivan, the state has thrown tons of money at education.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: We've assumed that, well, more money equals better education. Let's just spend more money. How much more? More. How much more money do we need to spend? Just more, more, more, more, more. We have doubled real per-pupil spending in the past 10 years.
SANCHEZ: And yet, says Sullivan, Texas has nothing to show for it. Schools are still graduating students unprepared for college or work. That's why school districts have no credibility when they complain about funding. Sandy Kress, an attorney in Austin with close ties to both political parties, doesn't go that far, but he, too, faults school districts for looking at this as a crisis rather than an opportunity to show they can be more efficient with the money they get.
SANDY KRESS: The system is getting defensive about having to make the changes it has to make. It's resisting change and accountability, just as people who are paying the taxes are getting tired of paying the taxes. I am definitely worried.
SANCHEZ: Kress says efficiency and accountability are crucial, but he worries even more that Texas will revert to the bad old days when school districts used tight budgets as an excuse for neglecting low-income and minority students.
KRESS: The result is that children will be left behind, gaps will grow again and we may be in a place where we are retreating instead of advancing for the first time in 50 years. And this is disastrous.
SANCHEZ: Already, the $4.3 billion in school funding cuts seems to have made the disparity between poor and wealthy school districts worse. A poor district now gets $800 less per student from the state than a wealthy district. Over 300 school districts are now suing. They're hoping the courts will declare the cuts and the school funding formula in Texas unconstitutional. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
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